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Twitch Upcoming!

We're delaying our Twitch till AFTER a very specific KS update. You'll know what one, we'll talk about the twitch in the update. We need all hands to get this one ready.
Which still means something good is coming.https://www.twitch.tv/missingworldsmedia

Ooh, call him Rabies!
Hey, the goal of a dark suit with animal mask is to scare people, right?
What are criminals more afraid of, bats, dogs, cats, or rabies?
Answer: Rabies.
I'd run from Rabies Man far faster than I ran from Dachshund Man.

But in all seriousness, as someone suggested in another thread, a play on Boxer might be best, because it's both a fighting style and dog.

On the edge of your Perceptions......
Turn away and feel his hand upon your shoulder.....
Look for him and he shall not exist.....
in the middle of the crowd....lost in the faces....
Stands a Figure....of Gray......

The image looks good. However coming up with a suitable name is harder to avoid copy writes. The best I could come up with are: Akita or Boxer Hound. Or some variation of hound. I'm also not sure if any of them are taken.

However, my other inclusion is that this hero needs two sidekicks: Bark and Bite. Everyone has to figure out which one is worse.

‘It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me out,’ said Zaphod, whose love affair with the ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. 'Every time you try and operate these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you’ve done it.’
- Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe

I basically can't see a THING in that gif. I can tell something's moving ... but not what that something is, or even what it looks like! Even zooming that gif up to 300% of normal, all I can see is BLACK costume against BLACK night sky, which makes for some pretty lousy visibility guys.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

This guy was Rottweiler until we realized that name was copyrighted - we haven't officially decided on his new name yet.

With respect to finding an alternative name for this character, I started with the perhaps stereotypical notion of some variant of K9 (or K-9) ... possibly even something like K90 or K99 (or even K98) as an option ... and then went google searching. Predictably enough, most of the results turned up radio stations for things like K90 to K99, which might be problematic.

The next step I took was to just dig through wikipedia on the Disambiguation page for K9, which then led to the article about Police Dogs in which I found a link to Popular Police Dog Breeds which contained the Rottweiler in the "all dogs" category ... which then seemed to be a good place/category to start looking for an alternative character name (based on a dog breed) pulling from the same category.

The first type I looked at in the category was the Akita, which I wasn't familiar with and which has its origins in Japan. This didn't feel like it would have any particular "resonance" of character though, so I moved on.

The next breed in the list I clicked on was the Belgian Malinois ... and hoo boy did the article writeup for this breed start sounding almost exactly like what you'd want to base this particular character around, conceptually, if going for a "dog character thematic" concept scheme! I mean, just look at what that wikipedia article contains and ask yourself if the following doesn't scream Superhero Theme to you ...

Quote:

The breed is used as a working dog for tasks including detection of odors such as explosives, accelerants (for arson investigation), and narcotics; tracking humans for suspect apprehension in police work; and search and rescue missions. The U.S. Secret Service uses Belgian Malinois to guard the grounds of the White House.

Well-raised and trained Malinois are usually active, intelligent, friendly, protective, alert and hard-working. Belgian Malinois exhibit energy levels that are among the highest of all dog breeds. A typical Malinois will have puppy-like energy until the age of three, though it is not uncommon for them to exhibit this energy level until the age of five. Many have excessively high prey drive. Some may be excessively exuberant or playful, especially when young.
They can be destructive or develop neurotic behaviors if not provided enough stimulation and exercise. This often causes problems for owners who are unfamiliar with the breed and are not prepared to provide the exercise they require or a job for them to do. They are medium-sized, strong dogs that require consistent obedience training, and enjoy being challenged with new tasks. They are known to be very easy to train, due to their high drive for rewards.

Malinois dogs are used by the Oketz, the K-9 unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Malinois are a suitable size to be picked up by their handlers when required, while still being large enough to control human aggressors. Compared to previously used breeds (such as German Shepherds and Rottweilers), the shorter coats and fair and neutral colors of Malinois are better adapted to natural conditions and less prone to induce heatstroke.
United States Navy SEALs used a Belgian Malinois war dog named Karo in Operation Neptune Spear, in which Osama bin Laden was killed.

Malinois can compete in dog agility trials and in flyball, herding, obedience, showmanship, and tracking events, and are one of the most popular breeds used in protection sports such as the Schutzhund. In America, herding is a popular activity.
Herding instincts can be measured at noncompetitive herding tests. In 2011 alone, the AKC awarded 39 new herding titles to Belgian Malinois.

Best of all, a quick google search of the terms "Malinois comic" yields NO HITS that MWM would need be concerned about for copyright purposes/reasons.

So ... I propose renaming this character "Malinois" (pronounced Ma.lin.wa) as being the sort of thing which can be both obscure (I'd unlike names like German Sheppard or Rottweiler or Bloodhound, etc.) but be something that "those in the know" about dog breeds would almost IMMEDIATELY recognize as being something you REALLY don't want to be tangling with. It's also something which, in typical American fashion, would be easy to mispronounce or "read wrong" in order to set up some interesting character points in which the NPC gets to "correct" their opponent and/or in which Foes who don't know the reputation of the breed get ... educated ... about what the breed can do in ways that can range from the humorous all the way up to "Game over, man! It's game over! The Malinois is after us!" levels of fear and terror breaking morale. Kind of like how in the Batman movies, street thugs and purse snatchers are often dismissive of "The Bat" until they're confronted with the reality of The Batman.

And then there's THIS reaction, when Foe NPCs have got a clue ...

—

Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

I'm surprised no one's asked; does his name have to be canine related for some reason?

On a different topic; if he's the secretive type (which he looks like), it's possible his accepted public codename might come from the general public or a news reporter right? Maybe he ends up with a name closer to what the reporter thinks his outfit means?

Project_Hero wrote:

Looking good!

Could use an alternate (read bad) spelling because poor literacy is Kewl.

Oh, you mean like "Cool" right?

I found this when I looked up the history of the word: "It appeared originally as col—which can be found as far back as the ninth century, when someone translated the poetry of the Roman philosopher Boethius from Latin into English—and, for a long time, couldn’t quite figure out how it wanted to be spelled."

I keep being surprised by your animations, since I would have never imagined that a Kickstarter project would reach such quality in that sector (there are several good quality games coming from KS, but pretty much all of them have bad animations even if stellar other sectors, like high quality textures and features, the only other exception was Star Citizen probably with tripleA standard animations, which I didn't fund by the way... I'm one of the few).

Animations are probably the top visual difference between amateur and professional projects: if you (player) desire good animations and don't fall for the high-texture-screenshots tricks when judging the graphic quality of a game, you get caged for tripleA titles only, pretty much with EA or Ubi etc. (which unfortunately lack LOVE for what they do and tend to rush things and economize everything including their imagination).

After I saw your last animation examples now I don't really know where to put my doubts in this project, I keep thinking lately: there must be a negative side or it will end being "too perfect to be real". For some is probably the long wait, but even that is still a positive point for me, since it means that you don't rush things prematurely (which was one of my early worries which you slowly cancelled, animations was the other and it's gone too...).

We forgot the classic way to get around copyrights.
Just add a rank. Lt. Rottweiler, Sgt. Rottweiler, Dr. Rottweiler,...
or a color: Red Rottweiler, Black Rottweiler
or some other word: Cyber Rottweiler, Shadow Rottweiler, Vicious Rottweiler

In relation to Reds suggestion, If we are going with straight dog breed names. You could go with Cane Corso. This breed of dog looks almost exactly like the 3D model. Also, Corso means “Protector”. Seems like a pretty good fit as well. And in true hero fashion, you gotta love the alliteration :D

I kinda like Leash Law.
It sounds like something an inexperienced super might name themselves if they were a do gooder. They might be able to toss in a few "Long arm of the Law" or "I fought the Law and the Law won" puns. The "Leash" hints at the canine nature of the character's background without being a direct dog reference. It could also hint at a mode of apprehension. The police find gang members "leashed" to a light pole, a calling card of Leash Law, Crime Fighter At Large.

Do we have a brief character background or personality for the "Rottweiler" super to give us an idea of what might be a good name for him?

He's being used as a street level hero who advances as you do, story wise.

Beyond that, basic background is that of a poor kid who decided on standing up to the gangs in his neighborhood.

Then I totally expect some others will be calling him Pound Puppy. Especially in the beginning. The veterans who may look down on him, good naturedly or not, and the gangs as well; until he proves himself to be a badass with us.

I could even see a line something like, "your bark is worse than your bite, Pound Puppy. And you don't even have much of a bark now. Maybe we should just call you Kennel Cough!","ha ha, good one boss","shut up, Tazerface"

Alright so I actually looked up wolfbat on google, and the most I could find was a non profit webcomic as far as superheroes go, aside from fan drawings of werewolf versions of batman. Maybe Wolfbat could work?

Also is it to late to change the design of the costume? If it isn't, you could probably just swap out his theme to something not so over done. Dogs are popular animals, so there should lready be a lot of names taken for them.